"Behold that man—the glory of his age!Whose art can all Pandora's ills assuage.In skill and tact no rival pow'r is known—E'en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."[7]
"Behold that man—the glory of his age!Whose art can all Pandora's ills assuage.In skill and tact no rival pow'r is known—E'en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."[7]
"Behold that man—the glory of his age!
Whose art can all Pandora's ills assuage.
In skill and tact no rival pow'r is known—
E'en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."[7]
Enthusiasm having thus gone to the last limits in verse, enthusiasm had but one way left to become remarkable in prose: that is, violence. Is it not thus that we must characterize the words of Bergasse?—"The adversaries of animal magnetism are men who must one day be doomed to the execration of all time, and to the punishment of the avenging contempt of posterity."
It is rare for violent words not to be followed by violent acts. Here every thing proceeded according to the natural course of human events. We know, indeed, that some furious admirers of Mesmer attempted to suffocate Berthollet in the corner of one of the rooms of the Palais Royal, for having honestly said that the scenes he had witnessed did not appear to him demonstrative. We have this anecdote from Berthollet himself.
The pretensions of the German doctor increased with the number of his adherents. To induce him to permit only three learned men to attend his meetings, M. de Maurepas offered him, in the name of the king, 20,000 francs a year for life, and 10,000 annually for house-rent. Yet Mesmer did not accept this offer, but demanded, as a national recompense, one of the most beautiful châteaux in the environs of Paris, together with all its territorial dependencies.
Irritated at finding his claims repulsed, Mesmer quitted France, angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have been in his power to save her. In a letter written to Marie Antoinette, the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers through austerity.
Through austerity!!! Are we then to believe that, as it was then pretended, Mesmer was entirely ignorant of the French language; that in this respect his meditations had been exclusively centered on the celebrated verse—
"Fools are here below for our amusement?"[8]
"Fools are here below for our amusement?"[8]
However this may be, the austerity of Mesmer did not prevent his being most violently angry when he learnt at Spa that Deslon continued the magnetical treatments at Paris. He returned in all haste. His partisans received him with enthusiasm, and set on foot a subscription of 100 louis per head, which produced immediately near 400,000 francs, (16,000l.) We now feel some surprise to see, among the names of the subscribers, those of Messrs. de Lafayette, de Ségur, d'Eprémesnil.
Mesmer quitted France a second time about the end of 1781, in quest of a more enlightened government, who could appreciate superior minds. He left behind him a great number of tenacious and ardent adepts, whose importunate conduct at last determined the government to submit the pretended magnetic discoveries to be examined by four Doctors of the Faculty of Paris. These distinguished physicians solicited to have added to them some members of the Academy of Sciences. M. de Breteuil then recommended Messrs. Le Roy, Bory, Lavoisier, Franklin, and Bailly, to form part of the mixed commission. Bailly was finally named reporter.
The work of our brother-academician appeared in August, 1784. Never was a complex question reduced to its characteristic traits with more penetration and tact; never did more moderation preside at an examination, though personal passions seemed to render it impossible; never was a scientific subject treated in a more dignified and lucid style.
Nothing equals the credulity of men in whatever touches their health. This aphorism is an eternal truth. It explains how a portion of the public has returned to mesmeric practices; how I shall still perform an interesting task by giving a detailed analysis of the magnificent labours published by our fellow-academician sixty years ago. This analysis will show, besides, how daring those men were, who recently, in the bosom of another academy, constituted themselves passionate defenders of some old women's tales, which one would have supposed had been permanently buried in oblivion.
The commissioners go in the first place to the treatment by M. Deslon, examine the famous rod, describe it carefully, relate the means adopted to excite and direct magnetism. Bailly then draws out a varied and truly extraordinary table of the state of the sick people. His attention is principally attracted by the convulsions that they designated by the name ofcrisis. He remarked that in the number of persons in the crisis state, there were always a great many women, and very few men; he does not imagine any deceit, however; holds the phenomena as established, and passes on to search out their causes.
According to Mesmer and his partisans, the cause of the crisis and of the less characteristic effects, resided in a particular fluid. It was to search out proofs of the existence of this fluid, that the commissioners had first to devote their efforts. Indeed, Bailly said, "Animal magnetism may exist without being useful, but it cannot be useful if it does not exist."
The animal magnetic fluid is not luminous and visible, like electricity; it does not produce marked and manifest effects on inert matter, as the fluid of the ordinary magnet does; finally, it has no taste. Some magnetizers asserted that it had a smell; but repeated experiments proved that they were in error. The existence, then, of the pretended fluid, could be established only by its effects on animated beings.
Curative effects would have thrown the commission into an inextricable dædalus, because nature alone, without any treatment, cures many maladies. In this system of observations, they could not have hoped to learn the exact part performed by magnetism, until after a great number of cures, and after trials oftentimes repeated.
The commissioners, therefore, had to limit themselves to instantaneous effects of the fluid on the animal organism.
They then submitted themselves to the experiments, but using an important precaution. "There is no individual," says Bailly, "in the best state of health, who, if he closely attended to himself, would not feel within him an infinity of movements and variations, either of exceedingly slight pain, or of heat, in the various parts of his body.... These variations, which are continually taking place, are independent of magnetism.... The first care required of the commissioners was, not to be too attentive to what was passing within them. If magnetism is a real and powerful cause, we have no need to think about it to make it act and manifest itself; it must, so to say, force the attention, and make itself perceived by even a purposely distracted mind."
The commissioners, magnetized by Deslon, felt no effect. After the healthy people, some ailing ones followed, taken of all ages, and from various classes of society. Among these sick people, who amounted to fourteen, five felt some effects. On the remaining nine, magnetism had no effect whatever.
Notwithstanding the pompous announcements, magnetism already could no longer be considered as a certain indicator of diseases.
Here the reporter made a capital remark: magnetism appeared to have no effect on incredulous persons who had submitted to the trials, nor on children. Was it not allowable to think, that the effects obtained in the others proceeded from a previous persuasion as to the efficacy of the means, and that they might be attributed to the influence of imagination? Thence arose another system of experiments. It was desirable to confirm or to destroy this suspicion; "it became therefore requisite to ascertain to what degree imagination influences our sensations, and to establish whether it could have been in part or entirely the cause of the effects attributed to magnetism."
There could be nothing neater or more demonstrative than this portion of the work of the commissioners. They go first to Dr. Jumelin, who, let it be observed, obtains the same effects, the same crises as Deslon and Mesmer, by magnetizing according to an entirely different method, and not restricting himself to any distinction of poles; they select persons who seem to feel the magnetic action most forcibly, and put their imagination at fault by now and then bandaging their eyes.
What happens then?
When the patients see, the seat of the sensations is exactly the part that is magnetized; when their eyes are bandaged, they locate these same sensations by chance, sometimes in parts very far away from those to which the magnetizer is directing his attention. The patient, whose eyes are covered, often feels marked effects at a time when they are not magnetizing him, and remains, on the contrary, quite passive while they are magnetizing him, without his being aware of it.
Persons of all classes offer similar anomalies. An instructed physician, subjected to these experiments, "feels effects whilst nothing is being done, and often does not feel effects while he is being acted upon. On one occasion, thinking that they had been magnetizing him for ten minutes, this same doctor fancied that he felt a heat in his lumbi, which he compared to that of a stove."
Sensations thus felt, when no magnetizing was exerted, must evidently have been the effect of imagination.
The commissioners were too strict logicians to confine themselves with these experiments. They had established that imagination, in some individuals, can occasion pain, and heat—even a considerable degree of heat—in all parts of the body; but practical female Mesmerizers did more; they agitated certain people to that pitch, that they fell into convulsions. Could the effect of imagination go so far?
Some new experiments entirely did away with these doubts.
A young man was taken to Franklin's garden at Passy, and when it was announced to him that Deslon, who had taken him there, had magnetized a tree, this young man ran about the garden, and fell down in convulsions, but it was not under the magnetized tree: the crisis seized him while he was embracing another tree, very far from the former.
Deslon selected, in the treatment of poor people, two women who had rendered themselves remarkable by their sensitiveness around the famous rod, and took them to Passy. These women fell into convulsions whenever they thought themselves mesmerized, although they were not. At Lavoisier's, the celebrated experiment of the cup gave analogous results. Some plain water engendered convulsions occasionally, when magnetized water did not.
We must really renounce the use of our reason, not to perceive a proof in this collection of experiments, so well arranged that imagination alone can produce all the phenomena observed around the mesmeric rod, and that mesmeric proceedings, cleared from the delusions of imagination, are absolutely without effect. The commissioners, however, recommence the examination on these last grounds, multiply the trials, adopt all possible precautions, and give to their conclusions the evidence of mathematical demonstrations. They establish, finally and experimentally, that the action of the imagination can both occasion the crises to cease, and can engender their occurrence.
Foreseeing that people with an inert or idle mind would be astonished at the important part assigned to the imagination by the commissioners' experiments in the production of mesmeric phenomena, Bailly instanced: sudden affection disturbing the digestive organs; grief giving the jaundice; the fear of fire restoring the use of their legs to paralytic patients; earnest attention stopping the hiccough; fright blanching people's hair in an instant, &c.
The touching or stroking practised in mesmeric treatments, as auxiliaries of magnetism, properly so called, required no direct experiments, since the principal agent,—since magnetism itself, had disappeared. Bailly, therefore, confined himself, in this respect, to anatomical and physiological considerations, remarkable for their clearness and precision. We read, also, with a lively interest, in his report, some ingenious reflections on the effects of imitation in those assemblages of magnetized people. Bailly compares them to those of theatrical representations. He says: "Observe how much stronger the impressions are when there are a great many spectators, and especially in places where there is the liberty of applauding. This sign of particular emotions produces a general emotion, participated in by everybody according to their respective susceptibility. This is also observed in armies on the day of battle, when the enthusiasm of courage, as well as panic-terrors, propagate themselves with so much rapidity. The sound of the drum and of military music, the noise of the cannon, of the musquetry, the cries, the disorder, stagger the organs, impart the same movement to men's minds, and raise their imaginations to a similar degree. In this unity of intoxication, an impression once manifested becomes universal; it encourages men to charge, or determines men to fly." Some very curious examples of imitation close this portion of Bailly's report.
The commissioners finally examined whether these convulsions, occasioned by the imagination or by magnetism, could be useful in curing or easing the suffering persons. The reporter said: "Undoubtedly, the imagination of sick people often influences the cure of their maladies very much.... There are cases in which every thing must first be disordered, to enable us to restore order ... but the shock must be unique ... whereas in the public treatment by magnetism ... the habit of the crises cannot but be injurious."
This thought related to the most delicate considerations. It was developed in a report addressed to the king personally. This report was to have remained secret, but it was published some years since. It should not be regretted; the magnetic treatment, regarded in a certain point of view, pleased sick people much; they are now aware of all its dangers.
In conclusion, Bailly's report completely upsets an accredited error. This was an important service, nor was it the only one. In searching for the imaginary cause of animal magnetism, they ascertained the real power that man can exert over man, without the immediate and demonstrable intervention of any physical agent; they established that "the most simple actions and signs sometimes produce most powerful effects; that man's action on the imagination may be reduced to an art ... at least in regard to persons who have faith." This work finally showed how our faculties should be experimentally studied; in what way psychology may one day come to be placed among the exact sciences.
I have always regretted that the commissioners did not judge it expedient to add a historical chapter to their excellent work. The immense erudition of Bailly would have given it an inestimable value. I figure to myself, also, that in seeing the Mesmeric practices that have now been in use during upwards of two thousand years, the public would have asked itself whether so long an interval of time had ever been required to push a good and useful thing forward into estimation. By circumscribing himself to this point of view, a few traits would have sufficed.
Plutarch, for example, would have come to the aid of the reporter. He would have showed him Pyrrhus curing complaints of the spleen, by means of frictions made with the great toe of his right foot. Without giving one's self up to a wild spirit of interpretation, we might be permitted to see in that fact the germ of animal magnetism. I admit that one circumstance would have rather unsettled the savant: this was the white cock that the King of Macedon sacrificed to the gods before beginning these frictions.
Vespasian, in his turn, might have figured among the predecessors of Mesmer, in consequence of the extraordinary cures that he effected in Egypt by the action of his foot. It is true that the pretended cure of an old blindness, only by the aid of a little of that emperor's saliva, would have thrown some doubt on the veracity of Suetonius.
Homer and Achilles are not too far back but we might have invoked their names. Joachim Camerarius, indeed, asserted having seen, on a very ancient copy of the Iliad, some verses that the copyists sacrificed because they did not understand them, and in which the poet alluded, not to the heel of Achilles (its celebrity has been well established these three thousand years,) but to the medical properties possessed by the great toe of that same hero's right foot.
What I regret most is, the chapter in which Bailly might have related how certain adepts of Mesmer's had the hardihood to magnetize the moon, so as, on a given day, to make all the astronomers devoted to observing that body fall into a syncope; a perturbation, by the way, that no geometer, from Newton to Laplace, had thought of.
The work of Bailly gave rise to trouble, spite, and anger, among the Mesmerists. It was for many months the target for their combined attacks. All the provinces of France saw refutations of the celebrated report arise: sometimes under the form of calm discussions, decent and moderate; but generally with all the characteristics of violence, and the acrimony of a pamphlet.
It would be labour thrown away now to go to the dusty shelves of some special library, to hunt up hundreds of pamphlets, even the titles of which are now completely forgotten. The impartial analysis of that ardent controversy does not call for such labour; I believe at least that I shall attain my aim, by concentrating my attention on two or three writings which, by the strength of the arguments, the merit of the style, or the reputation of their authors, have left some trace in men's minds.
In the first rank of this category of works we must place the elegant pamphlet published by Servan, under the title ofDoubts of a Provincial, proposed to the Gentlemen Medical Commissioners commanded by the King to examine into Animal Magnetism.
The appearance of this little work of Servan's was saluted in the camp of the Mesmerists with cries of triumph and joy. Undecided minds fell back into doubt and perplexity. Grimm wrote in Nov. 1784: "No cause is desperate. That of magnetism seemed as if it must fall under the reiterated attacks of medicine, of philosophy, of experience and of good sense.... Well, M. Servan, formerly the Attorney-General at Grenoble, has been proving that with talent we may recover from any thing, even from ridicule."
Servan's pamphlet seemed at the time the anchor of salvation for the Mesmerists. The adepts still borrow from it their principal arguments. Let us see, then, whether it has really shaken Bailly's report.
From the very commencing lines, the celebrated Attorney-General puts the question in terms deficient in exactness. If we believe him, the commissioners were called to establish a parallel between magnetism and medicine; "they were to weigh on both sides the errors and the dangers; to indicate with wise discernment what it would be desirable to preserve, and what to retrench, in the two sciences." Thus, according to Servan, the sanative art altogether would have been questioned, and the impartiality of the physicians might appear suspicious. The clever magistrate took care not to forget, on such an occasion, the eternal maxim, no one can be both judge and client. Physicians, then, ought to have been excepted.
There then follows a legitimate homage to the non-graduated academicians, members of the commission: "Before Franklin and Bailly," says the author, "every knee must bend. The one has invented much, the other has discovered much; Franklin belongs to the two worlds, and all ages seem to belong to Bailly." But arming himself afterwards with more cleverness than uprightness, with these words of the reporter, "The commissioners, especially the doctors, made an infinity of experiments," he insinuates under every form that the commissioners accepted of a very passive line of conduct. Thus, putting aside the most positive declarations, pretending even to forget the name, the titles of the reporter, Servan no longer sees before him but one class of adversaries, regent doctors of the Faculty of Paris, and then he gives full scope to his satirical vein. He holds it even as an honour that they do not regard him as impartial. "The doctors have killed me; what it has pleased them to leave me of life is not worth, in truth, my seeking a milder term.... For these twenty years I have always been worse through the remedies administered to me than through my maladies.... Even were animal magnetism a chimera, it should be tolerated; it would still be useful to mankind, by saving many individuals among them from the incontestable dangers of vulgar medicine.... I wish that medicine, so long accustomed to deceive itself, should still deceive itself now, and that the famous report be nothing but a great error...." Amidst these singular declarations, there are hundreds of epigrams still more remarkable by their ingenious and lively turn than by their novelty. If it were true, Gentlemen, that the medical corps had ever tried, knowingly, to impose on the vulgar, to hide the uncertainty of their knowledge, the weakness of their theories, the vagueness of their conceptions, under an obscure and pedantic jargon, the immortal and laughable sarcasms of Molière would not have been more than an act of strict justice. In all cases every thing has its day; now, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most delicate, the most thorny points of doctrine were discussed with an entire good faith, with perfect lucidity, and in a style that placed many members of the faculty in the rank Of our best speakers. Servan, however, goes beyond the limits of a scientific discussion, when, without any sort of excuse, he accuses his adversaries of being anti-mesmerists through esprit de corps, and, what is worse, through cupidity.
Servan is more in his element when he points out that the present best established medical theories occasioned at their birth prolonged debates; when he reminds us that several medicines have been alternately proscribed and recommended with vehemence: the author might even have more deeply undermined this side of his subject. Instead of some unmeaning jokes, why did he not show us, for example, in a neighbouring country, two celebrated physicians, Mead and Woodward, deciding, sword in hand, the quarrel that had arisen between them as to the purgative treatment of a patient? We should then have heard Woodward, pierced through and through, rolling on the ground, and drenched in blood, say to his adversary with an exhausted voice: "The blow was harsh, but yet I prefer it to your medicine!"
It is not truth alone that has the privilege of rendering men passionate. Such was the legitimate result of these retrospective views. I now ask myself whether, by labouring to put the truth of this aphorism in full light, the passionate advocate of Mesmerism showed proof of ability!
Gentlemen, let us put all these personal attacks aside, all these recriminations against science and its agents, who unfortunately had not succeeded in restoring the health of the morose magistrate. What remains then of his pamphlet? Two chapters, only two chapters, in which Bailly's report is treated seriously. The medical commissioners and the members of the Academy had not seen, in the real effects of Mesmerism anything more than was occasioned by imagination. The celebrated magistrate exclaims on this subject, "Any one hearing this proposition spoken of would suppose, before reading the report, that the commissioners had treated and cured, or considerably relieved by the force of imagination, large tumours, inveterate obstructions, gutta serenas, and strong paralyses." Servan admitted, in short, that magnetism had effected most wonderful cures. But there lay all the question. The cures being admitted, the rest followed as a matter of course.
However incredible these cures might be, they must be admitted, they said, when numerous witnesses certified their truth. Was it owing to chance that attestations were wanting for the miracles at the Cemetery of St. Médard? Did not the counsellor to the parliament, Montgeron, state, in three large quarto volumes, the names of a great multitude of individuals who protested on their honour as illuminati, that the tomb of the Deacon, Páris, had restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the paralytic; that in a twinkling it cured ailing people of gouty rheumatism, of dropsy, of epilepsy, of phthisis, of abscesses, of ulcers, &c.? Did these attestations, although many emanated from persons of distinction, from the Chevalier Folard, for example, prevent the convulsionists from becoming the laughingstock of Europe? Did they not see the Duchess of Maine herself laugh at their prowess in the following witty couplet?—
"A scavenger at the palace-gateWho, his left heel being lame,Obtained as a most special grace,That his right should ail the same."[9]
"A scavenger at the palace-gateWho, his left heel being lame,Obtained as a most special grace,That his right should ail the same."[9]
"A scavenger at the palace-gate
Who, his left heel being lame,
Obtained as a most special grace,
That his right should ail the same."[9]
Was not government, urged to the utmost, at last obliged to interfere, when the multitude, carrying folly to the extremest bounds, was going to try to resuscitate the dead? In short, do we not remember the amusing distich, affixed at the time to the gate of the Cemetery of St. Médard?—
"By royal decree, we prohibit the godsTo work any miracles near to these sods."[10]
"By royal decree, we prohibit the godsTo work any miracles near to these sods."[10]
"By royal decree, we prohibit the gods
To work any miracles near to these sods."[10]
Servan must have known better than any one that in regard to testimony, and in questions of complex facts, quality always carries the day over mere numbers; let us add, that quality does not result either from titles of nobility, or from riches, nor from the social position, nor even from a certain sort of celebrity. What we must seek for in a witness is a calmness of mind and of feeling, a store of knowledge, and a very rare thing, notwithstanding the name it bears, common sense; on the other hand, what we must most avoid is the innate taste of some persons for the extraordinary, the wonderful, the paradoxical. Servan did not at all recollect these precepts in the criticism he wrote on Bailly's work.
We have already remarked that the Commissioners of the Academy and of the Faculty did not assert that the Mesmeric meetings were always ineffectual. They only saw in the crises the mere results of imagination; nor did any sort of magnetic fluid reveal itself to their eyes. I will also prove, that imagination alone generated the refutation that Servan gave to Bailly's theory. "You deny," exclaims the attorney-general, "you deny, gentlemen commissioners, the existence of the fluid which Mesmer has made to act such an important part! I maintain, on the contrary, not only that this fluid exists, but also that it is the medium by the aid of which all the vital functions are excited; I assert that imagination is one of the phenomena engendered by this agent; that its greater or less abundance in this or that among our organs, may totally change the normal intellectual state of individuals."
Everybody agrees that too great a flow of blood towards the brain produces a stupefaction of the mind. Analogous or inverse effects might evidently be produced by a subtle, invisible, imponderable fluid, by a sort of nervous fluid, or magnetic fluid (if this term be preferred), circulating through our organs. And the commissioners took good care not to speak on this subject of impossibility. Their thesis was more modest; they contented themselves with saying that nothing demonstrated the existence of such a fluid. Imagination, therefore, had no share in their report; but in Servan's refutation, on the contrary, imagination was the chief actor.
One thing that was still less proved, if possible, than any of those that we have been speaking of, is the influence that the magnetic fluid of the magnetizer might exert on the magnetized person.
In magnetism, properly so called, in that which physicists have studied with so much care and success, the phenomena are constant. They are reproduced exactly under the same conditions of form, of duration, and of quantity, when certain bodies, being present to each other, find themselves exactly in the same relative positions. That is the essential and necessary character of all purely material and mechanical action. Was it thus in the pretended phenomena of animal magnetism? In no way. To-day the crises would occur in the space of some seconds; to-morrow they may require several entire hours; and finally, on another day, other circumstances remaining the same, the effect would be positively null. A certain magnetizer exercised a brisk action on a certain patient, and was absolutely powerless on another who, on the contrary, entered into a crisis under the earliest efforts of a second magnetizer. Instead of one or two universal fluids, there must, then, to explain the phenomena, be as many distinct fluids, and constantly acting, as there exist animated or inanimate beings in the world.
The necessity of such a hypothesis evidently upset Mesmerism from its very foundations; yet the illuminati did not judge thus. All bodies became a focus of special emanations, more or less subtle, more or less abundant, and more or less dissimilar. So far the hypothesis found very few contradictors, even among rigorous minds; but soon these individual corporeal emanations were endowed, relatively towards those, (without the least appearance of proof,) either with a great power of assimilation, or with a decided antagonism, or with a complete neutrality; but they pretended to see in these occult qualities the material causes of the most mysterious affections of the soul. Oh! then doubt had a legitimate right to take possession of all those minds that had been taught by the strict proceedings of science not to rest satisfied with vain words. In the singular system that I have been explaining, when Corneille says,—
"There are some secret knots, some sympathies,By whose relations sweet assorted soulsAttach themselves the one to the other...."[11]
"There are some secret knots, some sympathies,By whose relations sweet assorted soulsAttach themselves the one to the other...."[11]
"There are some secret knots, some sympathies,
By whose relations sweet assorted souls
Attach themselves the one to the other...."[11]
and when the celebrated Spanish Jesuit Balthazar Gracian spoke of the natural relationship of minds and hearts, both the one and the other alluded, assuredly without suspecting it, to the mixture, penetration, and easy crossing of two atmospheres.
"I love thee not, Sabidus," wrote Martial, "and I know not why; all that I can tell thee is, that I love thee not." Mesmerists would soon have relieved the poet from his doubts. If Martial loved not Sabidus, it was because their atmospheres could not intermingle without occasioning a kind of storm.
Plutarch informs us that the conqueror of Arminius fainted at the sight of a cock. Antiquity was astonished at this phenomenon. What could be more simple, however? the corporeal emanations of Germanicus and of the cock exercised a repulsive action the one on the other.
The illustrious biographer of Cheronea declares, it is true, that the presence of the cock was not requisite, that its crowing produced exactly the same effect on the adopted son of Tiberius. Now, the crowing may be heard a long way off; the crowing, then, would seem to possess the power of transporting the corporeal emanations of the king of the lower court with great rapidity through space. The thing may appear difficult to believe. As for myself, I think it would be puerile to stop at such a difficulty; have we not leaped high over other difficulties far more embarrassing?
The Maréchal d'Albret was still worse off than Germanicus: the atmosphere that made him fall into a syncope exhaled from the head of a wild boar. A live, complete, whole wild boar produced no effect; but on perceiving the head of the animal detached from the body, the Maréchal was struck as if with lightning. You see, gentlemen, to what sad trials military men would be exposed, if the Mesmerian theory of atmospheric conflicts were to regain favour. We ought to be carefully on our guard against a ruse de guerre, of which no one till then had ever thought,—that is, against cocks, wild boars, &c.,—for through them an army might suddenly be deprived of its commander-in-chief. "It would also be requisite not to entrust command," Montaigne says, "to men who would fly from apples more than from arquebusades."
It is not only amongst the corpuscular emanations of living animals that the Mesmerists asserted conflicts to occur. They unhesitatingly extended their speculations to dead bodies. Some ancients dreamt that a catgut cord made of a wolf's intestines would never strike in unison with one made from a lamb's intestine; a discord of atmospheres renders the phenomenon possible. It is still a conflict of corporeal emanations that explains the other aphorism of an ancient philosopher: "The sound of a drum made with a wolf's skin takes away all sonorousness from a drum made with a lamb's skin."
Here I pause, Gentlemen. Montesquieu said: "When God created the brains of human beings, he did not intend to guarantee them."
To conclude: Servan's witty, piquant, agreeably written pamphlet was worthy under this triple claim of the reception with which the public honoured it; but it did not shake, in any one part, the lucid, majestic, elegant report by Bailly. The magistrate of Grénoble has said, that in his long experience he had met men accustomed to reflect without laughing, and other men who only wished to laugh without reflecting. Bailly thought of the first class when he wrote his memorable report.The Doubts of the Provincial manwere destined only for the other class.
It was also to these light and laughing souls that Servan exclusively addressed himself some time after, if it be true that theQueries of the young Doctor Rhubarbini de Purgandiswere written by him.
Rhubarbini de Purgandis sets to work manfully. In his opinion the report by Franklin, by Lavoisier, by Bailly, is, in the scientific life of those learned men, what theMonadeswere for Leibnitz, theWhirlwindsfor Descartes, theCommentary on the Apocalypsefor Newton. These examples may enable us to judge of the rest, and render all farther refutation unnecessary.
Bailly's report destroyed root and branch the ideas, the systems, the practices of Mesmer and of his adepts. Let us add sincerely that we have no right to appeal to him in regard to modern somnambulism. The greater portion of the phenomena now grouped around that name were neither known nor announced in 1783. A magnetizer certainly says the most improbable thing in the world, when he affirms that a given individual in the state of somnambulism can see every thing in the most profound darkness, that he can read through a wall, and even without the help of his eyes. But the improbability of these announcements does not result from the celebrated report, for Bailly does not mention such marvels, neither in praise nor dispraise; he does not say one word about them. The physicist, the doctor, the merely curious man who gives himself up to experiments in somnambulism, who thinks he must examine whether, in certain states of nervous excitement, some individuals are really endowed with extraordinary faculties; with the faculty, for example, of reading with their stomach, or with their heel; people who wish to know exactly up to what point the phenomena so boldly asserted by the magnetizers of our epoch may be within the domain of rogues and sharks; all such people, we say, do not at all deny the authority of the subject in question, nor do they put themselves really in opposition to the Lavoisiers, the Franklins, or the Baillys; they dive into an entirely new world, of which those illustrious learned men did not even suspect the existence.
I cannot approve of the mystery adopted by some grave learned men, who, in the present day, attend experiments on somnambulism. Doubt is a proof of diffidence, and has rarely been inimical to the progress of science. We could not say the same of incredulity. He who, except in pure mathematics, pronounces the wordimpossible, is deficient in prudence. Reserve is especially requisite when we treat of animal organization.
Our senses, notwithstanding twenty-four centuries of study, observations, and researches, are far from being an exhausted subject. Take, for example, the ear. A celebrated natural philosopher, Wollaston, occupied himself with it; and immediately we learn, that with an equal sensibility as regards the low notes a certain individual can hear the highest tones, whilst another cannot hear them at all; and it becomes proved that certain men, with perfectly sound organs, never heard the cricket in the chimney-corner, yet did not doubt but that bats occasionally utter a piercing cry; and attention being once awakened to these singular results, observers have found the most extraordinary differences of sensibility between their right ear and their left ear, &c.
Our vision offers phenomena not less curious, and an infinitely vaster field of research. Experience has proved, for example, that some people are absolutely blind to certain colours, as red, and enjoy perfect vision relatively to yellow, to green, and to blue. If the Newtonian theory of emission be true, we must irrevocably admit that a ray ceases to be light as soon as we diminish its velocity by one ten thousandth part. Thence flow those natural conjectures, which are well worthy of experimental examination: all men do not see by the same rays; decided differences may exist in this respect in the same individual during various nervous states; it is possible that the calorific rays, the dark rays of one person, may be the luminous rays of another person, and reciprocally; the calorific rays traverse some substances freely, which are therefore called diathermal, these substances, thus far, had been called opaque, because they transmit no ray commonly called luminous; now the words opaque and diathermal have no absolute meaning. The diathermals allow those rays to pass through which constitute the light of one man; and they stop those which constitute the light of another man. Perhaps in this way the key of many phenomena might be found, that till now have remained without any plausible explanation.
Nothing, in the marvels of somnambulism, raised more doubts than an oft-repeated assertion, relative to the power which certain persons are said to possess in a state of crisis, of deciphering a letter at a distance with the foot, the nape of the neck, or the stomach. The wordimpossiblein this instance seemed quite legitimate. Still, I do not doubt but some rigid minds would withhold it after having reflected on the ingenious experiments by which Moser produces, also at a distance, very distinct images of all sorts of objects, on all sorts of bodies, and in the most complete darkness.
When we call to mind in what immense proportion electric or magnetic actions increase by motion, we shall be less inclined to deride the rapid actions of magnetizers.
In here recording these developed reflections, I wished to show that somnambulism must not be rejectedà priori, especially by those who have kept well up with the recent progress of the physical sciences. I have indicated some facts, some resemblances, by which magnetizers might defend themselves against those who would think it superfluous to attempt new experiments, or even to see them performed. For my part, I hesitate not to acknowledge it, although, notwithstanding the possibilities that I have pointed out, I do not admit the reality of the readings, neither through a wall, nor through any other opaque body, nor by the mere intromission of the elbow, or the occiput,—still, I should not fulfil the duties of an academician if I refused to attend the meetings where such phenomena were promised me, provided they granted me sufficient influence as regards the proofs, for me to feel assured that I was not become the victim of mere jugglery.
Nor did Franklin, Lavoisier, or Bailly believe in Mesmeric magnetism before they became members of the Government Commission, and yet we may have remarked with what minute and scrupulous care they varied the experiments. True philosophers ought to have constantly before their eyes those two beautiful lines:—
"To suppose that every thing has been discovered is a profound error:It is mistaking the horizon for the limits of the world."[12]
"To suppose that every thing has been discovered is a profound error:It is mistaking the horizon for the limits of the world."[12]
"To suppose that every thing has been discovered is a profound error:
It is mistaking the horizon for the limits of the world."[12]
FOOTNOTES:[7]"Le voilà, ce mortel, dont le siècle s'honore,Par qui sont replongés au séjour infernalTous les fléaux vengeurs que déchaîna Pandore;Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,Et la Grèce l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."[8]"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."[9]"Un décrotteur â la royale,Du talon gauche estropié,Obtint pour grace spécialeD'être boiteux de l'autre pié."[10]"De par le Roi, défense à DieuD'opérer miracle en ce lieu!"[11]"Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies,Dont par les doux rapports les âmes assortiesS'attachent l'une à l'autre."[12]"Croire tout découvert est un erreur profonde:C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."
[7]"Le voilà, ce mortel, dont le siècle s'honore,Par qui sont replongés au séjour infernalTous les fléaux vengeurs que déchaîna Pandore;Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,Et la Grèce l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."
[7]
"Le voilà, ce mortel, dont le siècle s'honore,Par qui sont replongés au séjour infernalTous les fléaux vengeurs que déchaîna Pandore;Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,Et la Grèce l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."
"Le voilà, ce mortel, dont le siècle s'honore,Par qui sont replongés au séjour infernalTous les fléaux vengeurs que déchaîna Pandore;Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,Et la Grèce l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."
"Le voilà, ce mortel, dont le siècle s'honore,
Par qui sont replongés au séjour infernal
Tous les fléaux vengeurs que déchaîna Pandore;
Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,
Et la Grèce l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."
[8]"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."
[8]
"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."
"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."
"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."
[9]"Un décrotteur â la royale,Du talon gauche estropié,Obtint pour grace spécialeD'être boiteux de l'autre pié."
[9]
"Un décrotteur â la royale,Du talon gauche estropié,Obtint pour grace spécialeD'être boiteux de l'autre pié."
"Un décrotteur â la royale,Du talon gauche estropié,Obtint pour grace spécialeD'être boiteux de l'autre pié."
"Un décrotteur â la royale,
Du talon gauche estropié,
Obtint pour grace spéciale
D'être boiteux de l'autre pié."
[10]"De par le Roi, défense à DieuD'opérer miracle en ce lieu!"
[10]
"De par le Roi, défense à DieuD'opérer miracle en ce lieu!"
"De par le Roi, défense à DieuD'opérer miracle en ce lieu!"
"De par le Roi, défense à Dieu
D'opérer miracle en ce lieu!"
[11]"Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies,Dont par les doux rapports les âmes assortiesS'attachent l'une à l'autre."
[11]
"Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies,Dont par les doux rapports les âmes assortiesS'attachent l'une à l'autre."
"Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies,Dont par les doux rapports les âmes assortiesS'attachent l'une à l'autre."
"Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies,
Dont par les doux rapports les âmes assorties
S'attachent l'une à l'autre."
[12]"Croire tout découvert est un erreur profonde:C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."
[12]
"Croire tout découvert est un erreur profonde:C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."
"Croire tout découvert est un erreur profonde:C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."
"Croire tout découvert est un erreur profonde:
C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."
In speaking of the pretended identity of the Atlantis, or of the kingdom of Ophir under Solomon with America, Bailly says, in his fourteenth letter to Voltaire: "Those ideas belonged to the age of learned men, but not to the philosophic age." And elsewhere (in the twenty-first letter) we read these words: "Do not fear that I shall fatigue you by heavy erudition." To have supposed that erudition could be heavy and be deficient in philosophy, was for certain people of a secondary order an unpardonable crime. And thus we saw men, excited by a sentiment of hate, arm themselves with a critical microscope, and painfully seek out imperfections in the innumerable quotations with which Bailly had strengthened himself. The harvest was not abundant; yet, these eager ferrets succeeded in discovering some weak points, some interpretations that might be contested. Their joy then knew no bounds. Bailly was treated with haughty disdain: "His literary erudition was very superficial; he had not the key of the sanctuary of antiquity; he was everywhere deficient in languages."
That it might not be supposed that these reproaches had any reference to Oriental literature, Bailly's adversaries added: "that he had not the least tincture of the ancient languages; that he did not know Latin."
He did not know Latin? And do you not see, you stupid enemies of the great Astronomer, that if it had been possible to compose such learned works asThe History of Astronomy, andThe Letters on the Atlantis, without referring to the original texts, by using translations only, you would no longer have preserved any importance in the literary world. How is it that you did not remark, that by despoiling Bailly (and very arbitrarily) of the knowledge of Latin, you showed the inutility of studying that language to become both one of your best writers, and one of the most illustrious philosophers of the age?
The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, far from participating in these puerile rancours, in the blind prejudices of some lost children of erudition, called Bailly to its bosom in 1785. Till then, Fontenelle alone had had the honour of belonging to the three great Academies of France. Bailly always showed himself very proud of a distinction which associated his name in an unusual manner with that of the illustrious writer, whose eulogies contributed so powerfully to make science and scientific men known and respected.
Independently of this special consideration, Bailly, as member of the French Academy, could all the better appreciate the suffrages of the Academy of Inscriptions, since there existed at that time between those two illustrious Societies a strong and inexplicable feeling of rivalry. This had even proceeded so far, that by a most solemn deliberation of the Academy of Inscriptions, any of its members would have ceased to belong to it, would have been irrevocably expelled, if they had even only endeavoured to be received into the French Academy; and the king having annulled this deliberation, fifteen academicians bound themselves by oath to observe all its stipulations notwithstanding; furthermore, in 1783, Choiseul Gouffier, who was accused of having adhered to the principles of the fifteen confederates, and then of having allowed himself to be nominated by the rival Academy, was summoned by Anquetil to appear before the Tribunal of the Marshals of France for having broken his word of honour.
But, I may be allowed here to remark, superior men have always had the privilege of upsetting, by the mere influence of their name, the obstacles that routine, prejudices, and jealousy wished to oppose to the progress and the union of souls.
Scientific tribunals, which should pronounce in the first instance while awaiting the definitive judgment of the public, were one of the requisites of our epoch; and thus, without any formal prescription of its successive regulations, the Academy of Sciences has been gradually led on to appoint committees to examine all the papers that have been presented to it, and to pronounce on their novelty, merit, and importance. This labour is generally an ungrateful one, and without glory, but talent has immense privileges; entrust Bailly with those simple Academical Reports, and their publication becomes an event.
M. Poyet, architect and comptroller of buildings in Paris, presented to Government in the course of the year 1785, a paper wherein he strove to establish the necessity of removing the Hôtel Dieu, and building a new hospital in another locality. This document, submitted by order of the king to the judgment of the Academy, gave rise, directly or indirectly, to three deliberations. The Academic Commissioners were, Lassone, Tenou, Tillet, Darcet, Daubenton, Bailly, Coulomb, Laplace, and Lavoisier. It was Bailly, however, who constantly held the pen. His reports have been honoured with a great and just celebrity. The progress of science would now perhaps allow of some modification being made in the ideas of the illustrious commissioners. Their views on warming-rooms, on their size, on ventilation, on general health, might, for example, receive some real ameliorations; but nothing could add to the sentiments of respect inspired by Bailly's work. What clearness of exposition! What neatness, what simplicity of style! Never did a writer put himself more completely out of view; never did a man more sincerely seek to make the sacred cause of humanity triumph. The interest that Bailly takes in the poor is deep, but always exempt from parade; his words are moderate, full of gentleness, even where hasty feelings of anger and indignation would have been legitimate. Of anger and of indignation! Yes, Gentlemen; listen, and decide!
I have cited the names of the commissioners. At no time, and in no country, could more virtue and learning have been united. These select men, regulating themselves in this respect according to the most common logic, felt that the task of pronouncing on a reform of the Hôtel Dieu imposed on them the necessity of examining that establishment. "We have asked," said their interpreter, "we have asked the Board of Administration to permit us to see the hospital in detail, and accompanied by some one who could guide and instruct us ... we required to know several particulars; we asked for them, but we obtained nothing."
We have obtained nothing! These are the sad, the incredible words, that men so worthy of respect are obliged to insert in the first line of their report!
What then was the authority that allowed itself to be so deficient in the most usual respect towards commissioners invested with the confidence of the King, the Academy, and the Public? This authority consisted of several administrators (the type of them, it is said, is not quite lost), who looked upon the poor as their patrimony, who devoted to them a disinterested but unproductive activity; who were impatient at any amelioration, the germ of which had not developed itself either in their own heads, or in those of certain men, philanthropic by nature, or by the privilege of their station. Ah! if by enlightened and constant care that vast asylum, opened to poverty and sickness, near Notre-Dame, had been then conducted, now sixty years ago, only in a tolerable way, we should have understood how, in taking human nature into consideration, the promoters of this great benefit would have repelled an examination that seemed to throw a doubt on their zeal and on their good sense. But alas! let us take from Bailly's work a few traits of the moderate and faithful picture that he drew of the Hôtel Dieu, and you shall decide, Gentlemen, whether the susceptibility of the administrators was authorized; whether, on the contrary, they ought not themselves to have anticipated the unhoped-for help from the king's power, united to science, which was now offered to them; whether by retarding certain ameliorations by a single day, they did not commit the crime of lèse-humanity.
In 1786, infirmities of all sorts were treated at the Hôtel Dieu: surgical maladies, chronic maladies, contagious maladies, female diseases, infantine diseases, &c. Every thing was admitted, but all presented an inevitable confusion.
A patient on arriving was often laid in the bed and in the sheets of a man who had had the itch, and had just died.
The department reserved for madmen being very confined, two were put to sleep together. Two madmen in the same sheets! Nature revolts at the very thought of it.
In the ward of St. Francis, reserved exclusively for men having the smallpox, there were sometimes, for want of other space, as many as six adults or eight children in a bed not a mètre and a half wide.
The women attacked with this frightful disease were mixed in the ward of St. Monique with others who had only a simple fever, and the latter fell an inevitable prey to the hideous contagion, in the very place where, full of confidence, they had hoped to recover their health.
Women with child, women in their confinement, were equally crowded, pell-mell, on narrow and infected truckle-beds.
Nor let it be supposed that I have borrowed from Bailly's Report some purely exceptional cases, belonging to those cruel times, when whole populations, suffering under some epidemic, were tried beyond all human anticipation. In their usual state, the beds of the Hôtel Dieu, which were not a mètre and a half wide, contained four, and often six patients; they were placed alternately head and feet, the feet of one touching the shoulders of the next; each had only for his share of space 25 centimetres (9 inches); now, a man of medium size, lying with his arms close to his body, is 48 centimetres (16 inches) broad at the shoulders. The poor patients then could not keep within the bed but by lying on their side perfectly immovable; no one could turn without pushing, without waking his neighbour; they therefore used to agree, as far as their illness would allow, for some of them to remain up part of the night in the space between the beds, whilst the others slept; and when the approaches of death nailed these unfortunate people to their place, did they not energetically curse that help, which in such a situation could only prolong their painful agony.
But it was not only that beds thus placed were a source of discomfort, of disgust; that they prevented rest and sleep; that an insupportable heat occasioned and propagated diseases of the skin and frightful vermin; that the fever patient bedewed his neighbours with his profuse perspirations; and that in the critical moment he might be chilled by contact with those whose hot fit would occur later, &c. Still more serious effects resulted from the presence of many sick in the same bed; the food, the medicines, intended for one person, often found their way to another. In short, Gentlemen, in those beds of multiple population, the dead often lay for hours, and sometimes whole nights, intermingled with the living. The principal charitable establishment in Paris thus offered those dreadful coincidences, that the poets of Rome, that ancient historians have represented under King Mezentius, as the utmost extreme of barbarism.
Such was, Gentlemen, the normal state of the old Hôtel Dieu. One word, one word only, will suffice to tell what was the exceptional state: they placed some patients on the tops or testers of those same beds, where we have found so much suffering, so many authorized maledictions.
Now, Gentlemen, let us, together with our fellow academician, cast a glance on the ward of surgical operations.
This ward was full of patients. The operations were performed in their presence. Bailly says, "We see there the preparations for the torment; there are heard the cries of the tormented. He who has to suffer the next day has before him a picture of his own future sufferings; he who has passed through this terrible trial, must be deeply moved at those cries so similar to his own, and must feel his agonies repeated; and these terrors, these emotions, he experiences in the midst of the progress of inflammation or suppuration, retarding his recovery, and at the hazard of his life." ... "To what purpose," Bailly justly exclaims, "would you make an unfortunate man suffer, if there is not a probability of saving him, and unless we increase that probability by all possible precautions?"
The heart aches, the mind becomes confused, at the sight of so much misery; and yet this hospital, so little in harmony with its intended purpose, still existed sixty years ago. It is in a capital, the centre of the arts, of knowledge, of polished manners; it is in an age renowned for the development of public wealth, for the progress of luxury, for the ruinous creation of a crowd of establishments devoted to amusements, to worldly and futile pleasures; it is by the side of the palace of an opulent archbishop; it is at the gate of a sumptuous cathedral, that the unfortunate, under the deceitful mask of charity, underwent such dreadful tortures. To whom should we impute the long duration of this vicious and inhuman organization?
To the professors of the art? No, no, Gentlemen! By an inconceivable anomaly the physicians, the surgeons, never obtained more than a secondary, a subordinate influence over the administration of the hospitals. No, no, the sentiments of the medical body for the poor could not be doubted, at an epoch and in a country where Dr. Anthony Petit thus answered the irritated queen, Marie Antoinette: "Madam, if I came not yesterday to Versailles, it was because I was attending the lying-in of a peasant, who was in the greatest danger. Your Majesty errs, however, in supposing that I neglect the Dauphin for the poor; I have hitherto treated the young child with as much attention and care as if he had been the son of one of your grooms."
Preference was granted to the most suffering, to those in most danger, disregarding rank and fortune; such was, you see, Gentlemen, the sublime rule of the French Medical Corps; and such is still its gospel. I want no other proof of it than those admirable words addressed by our fellow labourer Larrey, to his friend Tanchou, when wounded at the Battle of Montmirail: "Your wound is slight, sir; we have only room and straw in this ambulance for serious wounds. They will take you into that stable."
The medical corps could not, therefore, with any reason be accused or suspected in regard to the old Hôtel Dieu of Paris.
If economy be invoked, I find an answer quite à-propos in Bailly: the daily allowance for the patients at the Hôtel Dieu was notably higher than in other establishments in the capital more charitably organized.
Would any one go so far as to assert that the sick condemned to seek refuge in the hospitals, having their sensibilities blunted by labour, by misery, by their daily sufferings, would but faintly feel the effects of the horrible arrangements that the old Hôtel Dieu revealed to all clear-sighted people? I will quote from the report of our colleague; "The maladies continue nearly double the time at the Hôtel Dieu, compared with those at the Charité: the mortality there is also nearly double!... All the trepanned die in that hospital; whilst this operation is tolerably successful in Paris, and still more so at Versailles."
The maladies continue double the time! The mortality there is double! All those who are trepanned die! The lying-in women die in a frightful proportion, &c. These are the sinister words that strike the eye periodically in the statements of the Hôtel Dieu; and yet, let us repeat it, years passed away, and nothing was altered in the organization of the great hospital! Why persist in remaining in a condition that so openly wounds humanity? Must we, together with Cabanis, who also abused the old Hôtel Dieu severely, "must we exclaim, that abuses known by all the world, against which every voice is raised, have secret supporters who know how to defend them, in a manner to tire out well-meaning people? Must we speak of false characters, perverse hearts, that seemed to regard errors and abuses as their patrimony?" Let us dare to acknowledge it, Gentlemen, evil is generally perpetrated in a less wicked manner: it is done without the intervention of any strong passion; by vulgar, yet all-powerful routine, and ignorance. I observe the same thought, though couched in the calm and cleverly circumspect language of Bailly: "The Hôtel Dieu has existed perhaps since the seventh century, and if this hospital is the most imperfect of all, it is because it is the oldest. From the earliest date of this establishment, good has been sought, the desire has been to adhere to it, and constancy has appeared a duty. From this cause, all useful novelties have with difficulty found admission; any reform is difficult; there is a numerous administration to convince; there is an immense mass to move."
The immensity of the mass, however, did not discourage the old Commissioners of the Academy. Let this conduct serve as an example to learned men, to administrators, who might be called upon to cast an investigating eye on the whole of our beneficent and humane establishments. Undoubtedly, the abuses, if any yet exist, have not individually any thing to be compared to those to which Bailly's report did justice; but would it be impossible for them to have sprung up afresh in the course of half a century, and that in proportion to their multiplicity, they should still make enormous and deplorable breaches in the patrimony of the poor?
I shall modify very slightly, Gentlemen, the concluding words of our illustrious colleague's report, and I shall not in the least alter their innate meaning, if I say, in finishing this long analysis: "Each poor man is now laid alone in a bed, and he owes it principally to the gifted, persevering, and courageous efforts of the Academy of Sciences. The poor man ought to know it, and the poor man will not forget it." Happy, Gentlemen, happy the academy that can adorn itself with such reminiscences!
An attentive glance at the past has been, in all ages and in all countries, the infallible means of rightly appreciating the present. When we direct this glance to the sanitary state of Paris, the name of Bailly will again present itself in the first line amongst the promoters of a capital amelioration, which I shall point out in a few words.
Notwithstanding the numerous acts of parliament,—notwithstanding the positive police regulations, which dated back to Charles IX., to Henry III., to Henry IV., slaughter-houses still existed in the interior of the capital in 1788; for instance, at l'Apport-Paris, La Croix-Rouge, in the streets of the Butcheries, Mont-Martre, Saint-Martin, Traversine, &c. &c. The oxen were, consequently, driven in droves through frequented parts of the town; enraged by the noise of the carriages, by the excitements of the children, by the attacks or barking of the wandering dogs, they often sought to escape,—entered houses or alleys, spread alarm everywhere, gored people, and committed great damage. Fetid gases exhaled from buildings too small and badly ventilated; the offal that had to be carried away gave out an insupportable smell; the blood flowed through the gutters of the neighbourhood, with other remains of the animals, and putrefied there. The melting of tallow, an inevitable annexation of all slaughter-houses, spread around disgusting emanations, and occasioned a constant danger of fire.
So inconvenient, so repulsive a state of things, awakened the solicitude of individuals and of the public administration; the problem was submitted to our predecessors, and Bailly, as usual, became the reporter of the Academical Committee. The other members were Messrs. Tillet, Darcet, Daubenton, Coulomb, Lavoisier, and Laplace.
When Napoleon, wishing to liberate Paris from the dangerous and insalubrious results of internal slaughter-houses, decreed the construction of the fine slaughter-houses known by everybody, he found the subject already well examined, exhibited in all its points of view, in Bailly's excellent work. "We ask," said the reporter of the Academical Commission in 1788, "we ask that the shambles be removed to a distance from the interior of Paris;" and these interior shambles have disappeared accordingly. Does it create surprise that it required more than fifteen years to obtain the grant of this most reasonable demand? I will further remark that, unfortunately, there was nothing exceptional in this; he who sows a thought in a field rank with prejudices, with private interests, and with routine, must never expect an early harvest.
The publication of the five quarto volumes of whichthe History of Astronomyconsists, together with the two powerfulreportsthat I have just described, had worn out Bailly. To relax and amuse his mind, he resumed the style of composition that had enchanted him in his youth; he wrote some biographies, amongst others, that of Captain Cook, proposed as a prize-subject by the Academy of Marseilles, and the Life of Gresset.
The biography of Gresset first appeared anonymously. This circumstance gave rise to a singular scene, which the author used to relate with a smile. I will here myself repeat the principal traits of it, if it be only to deter writers, whoever they may be, from launching their works into the world without affixing their names to them.
The Marchioness of Créqui was a lady in the high circles of society, to whom a copy of the eulogium of the author ofVert-Vertwas presented as an offering. Some days after Bailly went to pay her a visit; did he hope to hear her speak favourably of the new work? I know not. At all events, our predecessor would have been ill rewarded for his curiosity.
"Do you know," said the great lady as soon as she saw him, "a Eulogy of Gresset recently published? The author has sent me a copy of it, without naming himself. He will probably come to see me; he may, perhaps, have come already. What could I say to him? I do not think any one ever wrote worse. He mistakes obscurity for profundity; it is the darkness before the creation."
Notwithstanding all Bailly's efforts to change the subject of the conversation, perhaps on account of those very efforts, the Marchioness rose, goes in search of the pamphlet, puts it into the author's hands, and begs of him to read aloud, if it be but the first page—quite enough, she said, to enable one to judge of the rest.
Bailly used to read remarkably well. I leave it to be guessed whether, on this occasion, he was able to exercise this talent. Superfluous trouble! Madame de Créqui interrupted him at each sentence by the most disagreeable commentaries, by exclamations such as the following: "Detestable style!" "Confusion worse confounded!" and other similar amenities. Bailly did not succeed in extorting any indulgences from Madame de Créqui, when, fortunately, the arrival of another visitor put an end to this insupportable torture.
Two years after this, Bailly having become the first personage in the city, some booksellers collected all his opuscula and published them. This time, the Marchioness, who had lost all recollection of the scene that I have been describing, overpowered the Mayor of Paris with compliments and felicitations on account of this same eulogy, which she had before treated with such inhuman rigour.
Such a contrast excited the mirth of the author. Still, might I dare to say so, Madame de Créqui was, perhaps, sincere on both occasions; had the exaggerations of praise and of criticism been put aside, it would not have been impossible to defend both opinions. The early pages of the pamphlet might appear embarrassed and obscure, whilst in the rest there might be found great refinement, elegance, and appreciations full of taste.
The Assembly of the Notables had no other effect than to show in a stronger light the disorder of the finances, and the other wounds that were galling France. It was then that the Parliament of Paris asked for the convocation of the States General. This demand was unfavourably received by Cardinal de Brienne. Soon afterwards the convocation became a necessity, and Necker, now in the ministry, announced, in the month of November, 1788, that it was decreed in Council, and that the king had even granted to the third estate a double representation, which had been so imprudently disputed by the courtiers.
The districts were formed, on the king's convocation, the 21st of April, 1789. That day was the first day of Bailly's political life. It was on the 21st of April that the Citizen of Chaillot, entering the Hall of theFeuillants, imagined, he said, that "he breathed a new atmosphere," and regarded "as a phenomenon that he should have become something in the body-politic, merely from his being a citizen."
The elections were to be made in two gradations. Bailly was named first elector of his district. A few days after, at the general meeting, the Assembly called him to the Board in quality of secretary. Thus it was our fellow-academician who, in the beginning, drew up the celebratedprocès-verbalof the meetings of the electors of Paris, so often quoted by the historians of the revolution.
Bailly also took an active part in drawing up the records of his district, and the records of the body of electors. The part he acted in these two capacities could not be doubtful, if we judge of it by the three following short quotations extracted from his memoirs: "The nation must remember that she is sovereign and mistress to order every thing.... It is not when reason awakes, that we should allege ancient privileges and absurd prejudices.... I shall praise the electors of Paris who were the first to conceive the idea of prefacing the French Constitution with a declaration of the Rights of Man."
Bailly had always been so extremely reserved in his conduct and in his writings, that it was difficult to surmise under what point of view he would consider the national agitation of '89. Hence, at the very beginning, the Abbé Maury, of the French Academy, proposed to unite himself to Bailly, and that they should reside at Versailles, and have an apartment in common between them. It is difficult to avoid a smile when one compares the conduct of the eloquent and impetuous Abbé with the categorical declarations, so distinct and so progressive, of the learned astronomer.
On Tuesday, the 12th of May, the general assembly of the electors proceeded to ballot for the nomination of the first deputy of Paris. Bailly was chosen.
This nomination is often quoted as a proof of the high intelligence, and of the wisdom of our fathers, two qualities which, since that epoch, must have been constantly on the decline, if we are to believe the blind Pessimists. Such an accusation imposed on me the duty of carrying the appreciation of this wisdom, of this intelligence that is held up against us, even to numerical correctness. The following is the result: the majority of the votes was 159; Bailly obtained 173; this was fourteen more than he required. If fourteen votes had changed sides the result would have been different. Was this an incident, I ask, to exclaim so much against?
Bailly showed himself deeply affected by this mark of the confidence with which he was regarded. His sensibility, his gratitude, did not prevent him, however, from recording in his memoirs the followingnaïveobservation: "I observed in the Assembly of the Electors a great dislike for literary men, and for the academicians."
I recommend this remark to all studious men who, by circumstances or by a sense of duty, may be thrown into the whirlpool of politics. Perhaps I may yield to the temptation of developing it, when I shall have to characterize Bailly's connection with his co-laborers in the first municipality of Paris.
The great question on the verification of the powers was already strongly agitated, the day that Bailly and the other Deputies of Paris for the first time were able to go to Versailles; our academician had only spoken once in that majestic assembly, viz: to induce the adoption of the method of voting by members beingseatedorstanding,—when, on the 3d of June, he was named Senior of the Deputies of the Communes (or Commons). Formerly, the right of presiding in the third house of the kingdom belonged to the provost of the merchants. Bailly in his diffidence thought that the assembly, in assigning the chair to him, had wished to compensate the capital for the loss of an old privilege. This consideration induced him to accept of a duty that he thought above his powers,—he who always depicted himself as timid to an extreme, and not possessing a facility of speaking.
Men's minds were more animated, more ardent in 1789 than those would admit who always see in the present a faithful image of the past. But calumny, that murderous arm of political party, already respected no position. Knowledge, loyalty, virtue, did not suffice to shelter any one from its poisoned darts. Bailly experienced it on the very day after his nomination to such an eminent post as President of the Communes.
On the 29th of May, the Communes had voted an address to the king on the constantly recurring difficulties that the nobility opposed to the union of the States General in one assembly. In order to carry out this most solemn deliberation, Bailly solicited an audience, in which the moderate and respectful expression of the anxiety of six hundred loyal deputies was to be presented to the monarch. In the midst of these strifes the Dauphin died. Without taking the trouble to consult dates, the court party immediately represented Bailly as a stranger to the commonest proprieties, and totally deficient in feeling; he ought, they said, to have respected the most allowable of griefs; his importunities had been barbarous.
I had imagined that such ridiculous accusations were no longer thought of; the categorical explanations that Bailly himself gave on this topic, seemed to me as if they would have sufficed to convince the most prejudiced. I was deceived, Gentlemen; the reproach of violence, of brutal insensibility, has just been repeated by the pen of a clever and a conscientious man. I will give his recital: "Scarcely two hours had elapsed since the royal child had breathed his last sigh, when Bailly, President of the Third Estate, insisted on admission to the king, who had prohibited any one being allowed to intrude upon him. But so positive was the demand, that they were obliged to yield, and Louis XVI. exclaimed, 'There are then no fathers in that chamber of the Third Estate.' The chamber very much applauded this trait of brutal insensibility in Bailly, which they termed a trait of Spartan stoicism."